Hi Mr. Moderator . . . Please move this thread to the Apple Hardware (or appropriate) forum. I just noticed this one is devoted to "i-Stuff" and I don't want to cross post.

Hi All. I have had my Mac Mini for almost 1.5 years. Last night I was adding an external HDD for Time machine and it struck me that I had all kinds of cabling (two or three) required to connect the Mac Mini to the display. The Mini has an HDMI port, but the Cinema Display doesn't. Why are all the different cables needed? Why wouldn't it be as simple as having an HDMI port on the Cinema Display and connecting to directly to the Mini? Am I getting the highest quality signal with all these conections and cables? Is there a way to "straight wire" the Mini to the Cinema Display? Any help, ideas, and input are welcome. Thanks in advance.

The Cinema Display only uses one of those cables (the DVI cable) for the video signal. The others are for passthrough of the USB and Firewire ports. And power, of course. The 30" Cinema Display doesn't have an HDMI port.

According to EveryMac.com, your Mac mini supports a maximum resolution of 1920x1200 over DVI or HDMI. It will support 2560x1600 using the Mini DisplayPort.

If you do indeed have a 30" Cinema Display, which is no longer sold, it appears that the optimal resolution would be 2560x1600. Since your Mac mini cannot output that resolution over DVI, and the monitor does not have a Mini DisplayPort to use, then currently you are NOT getting the optimal resolution.